Alberto Manguel has selected 72 fantastic tales from life on the edge of the twilight zone, with stories from Marguerite Yourcenar, Herman Hesse, Italo Calvino, Vladimir Nabokov, and many, many more. This is a collection of irresistible masterpieces, many of which have never before appeared in the English language.Fantastic literature Manguel writes in his introduction, makes use of our everyday world as a facade through which the undefinable appears, hinting at the half-forgotten dreams of our imagination. Unlike tales of fantasy, fantastic literature deals with what can be best defined as the impossible seeping into the possible, what Wallace Stevens calls black water breaking into reality. Fantastic literature never really explains everything, it thrives on surprise, on the unexpected logic that is born from its own rules.Contents:House taken over by Julio CortázarHow love came to Professor Guildea by Robert S. HichensClimax for a ghost story by I.A. IrelandThe mysteries of the Joy Rio by Tennessee WilliamsPomegranate seed by Edith WhartonVenetian masks by Adolfo Bioy CasaresThe wish house by Rudyard KiplingThe playground by Ray BradburyImportance by Manuel Mujica LáinezEnoch Soames by Max BeerbohmA visitor from down under by L.P. HartleyLaura by SakiAn injustice revealedA little place off the Edgware Road by Graham GreeneFrom "A School Story" by M.R. JamesThe signalman by Charles DickensThe tall woman by Pedro Antonio de AlarcónA scent of mimosa by Francis KingDeath and the gardener by Jean CocteauLord Mountdrago by W. Somerset MaughamThe sick gentleman's last visit by Giovanni PapiniInsomnia by Virgilio PiñeraThe storm by Jules VerneA dream (from The Arabian Nights Entertainments)The facts in the case of M. Valdemar by Edgar Allan PoeSplit second by Daphne du MaurierAugust 25, 1983 by Jorge Luis BorgesHow Wang-Fo was saved by Marguerite YourcenarFrom "Peter and Rosa" by Isak DinesenTattoo by Jun'ichirō TanizakiJohn Duffy's brother by Flann O'BrienLady into fox by David GarnettFather's last escape by Bruno SchulzA man by the name of Ziegler by Hermann HesseThe Argentine ant by Italo CalvinoThe lady on the grey by John CollierThe queen of spades by Alexander PushkinOf a promise kept by Lafcadio HearnThe wizard postponed by Juan ManuelThe monkey's paw by W.W. JacobsThe bottle imp by Robert Louis StevensonThe rocking-horse winner by D.H. LawrenceCertain distant suns by Joanne GreenburgThe third bank of the river by João Guimarães RosaHome by Hilaire BellocThe door in the wall by H.G. WellsThe friends by Silvina OcampoEt in sempiternum pereant by Charles WilliamsThe captives of Longjumeau by Léon BloyThe visit to the museum by Vladimir NabakovAutumn Mountain by Ryūnosuke AkutagawaThe sight by Brian MooreClorinda by André Pieyre de MandiarguesThe pagan rabbi by Cynthia OzickThe fisherman and his soul by Oscar WildeThe bureau d'echange de maux by Lord DunsanyThe ones who walk away from Omelas by Ursula K. LeGuinIn the penal colony by Franz KafkaA dog in Durer's etching "The Knight, Death and the Devil" by Marco DeneviThe large ant by Howard FastThe lemmings by Alex ComfortThe grey ones by J.B. PriestleyThe feather pillow by Horacio QuirogaSeaton's aunt by Walter de la MareThe friends of the friends by Henry JamesThe travelling companion by Hans Christian AndersenThe curfew tolls by Stephen Vincent BenetThe state of grace by Marcel AyméThe story of a panic by E.M. ForsterAn invitation to the hunt by George HitchcockFrom the "American Notebooks" by Nathaniel HawthorneThe dream by O. Henry

    For the first time in one volume: every word Bruce Sterling has ever written on the Shapers-Mechanists Universe.In the last decade, Sterling has emerged a pioneer of crucial, cutting-edge science fiction. Now Ace Books is proud to offer Sterling's stunning world of the Schismatrix--where Shaper revolutionaries struggle against aristocratic Mechanists for ultimate control of man's destiny. This volume includes the classic full-length novel, Schismatrix, plus thousands of words of mind-bending short fiction.

    Kingfisher comes a collection of short stories, including "Jackalope Wives," "The Tomato Thief," "Pocosin," and many others. By turns funny, lyrical, angry and beautiful, this anthology includes two all-new stories, "Origin Story" and "Let Pass The Horses Black," appearing for the first time in print.

    The collection offers a haunting montage that works its magic subtly on the reader's subconscious. As Karen Joy Fowler, Author of The Jane Austen Book Club says, ''This lovely collection will take you, like a magic carpet, to some strange and wonderful places.'' The eminent novelist and critic Ursula K. Le Guin writes: ''From the exotic, baroque complexities of 'At the Huts of Ajala' to the stark, folktale purity of 'The Beads of Ku,' these fourteen superbly written stories will weave around you a ring of dark, dark magic.'' Matt Ruff, author of Set This House In Order and Bad Monkeys calls Filter House ''A traveling story-bazaar, offering treasures and curios from diverse lands of wonder.'' Tobias Buckell, author of Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin, says ''Nisi Shawl uses the tools of future and fable, usually used to explore the other, the future, and the mysterious, to magically reveal what and who we all are here and today.'' Karen Joy Fowler declares, ''Sometimes enigmatic, often surprising, always marvelous. This lovely collection will take you, like a magic carpet, to some strange and wonderful places.'' And Eileen Gunn, author of Stable Strategies, concurs that these are ''Remarkably involving stories that pull you along a path of wonder, word by word, in worlds where everything is a bit different.''

    Dolls, sewing machines, tinned foods, mirrors, malfunctioning bodies - many images recur in stories that are in turn child-like and naive, grotesque and very dark.In Unstitching, a feminist revolution takes place. In Waxy, a factory worker fights to keep hold of her Man in a society where it is frowned upon to be Manless. In Agata's Machine, two schoolgirls conjure a Pierrot and an angel in a dank attic room. In Notes from a Spider, a half-man, half-spider finds love in a great European city.By constantly reinventing ways to engage with her obsessions and motifs, Camilla Grudova has come up with a method for storytelling that is highly imaginative, incredibly original, and absolutely discomfiting.Content:- Unstitching (2017)- The Mouse Queen (2017)- The Gothic Society (2017)- Waxy (2016)- The Doll's Alphabet (2017)- The Mermaid (2017)- Agata's Machine (2015)- Rhinoceros (2017)- The Sad Tale of the Sconce (2017)- Edward, Do Not Pamper the Dead (2017)- Hungarian Sprats (2017)- The Moth Emporium (2017)- Notes from a Spider (2017)

    The catastrophe is confined to Bellona, and most of the inhabitants have fled. But others are drawn to the devastated city, among them the Kid, a white/American Indian man who can't remember his own name. The Kid is emblematic of those who live in the new Bellona, who are the young, the poor, the mad, the violent, the outcast--the marginalized.

    P. Lovecraft into calling him "perhaps unexcelled by any other writer, dead or living” or compel Fritz Lieber to employ the worthy term sui generis. Clark Ashton Smith—autodidact, prolific poet, amateur philosopher, bizarre sculptor, and unmatched storyteller—simply wrote like no one else, before or since. This new collection of his very best tales and poems is selected and introduced by supernatural literature scholar S. T. Joshi and allows readers to encounter Smith’s visionary brand of fantastical, phantasmagorical worlds, each one filled with invention, terror, and a superlative sense of metaphysical wonder.

    Initially created by H. P. Lovecraft and a group of his amorphous contemporaries (the so-called "Lovecraft Circle"), The Cthulhu Mythos story cycle has taken on a convoluted, cyclopean life of its own. Some of the most prodigious writers of the 20th century, and some of the most astounding writers of the 21st century have planted their seeds in this fertile soil. The Book of Cthulhu harvests the weirdest and most corpulent crop of these modern mythos tales. From weird fiction masters to enigmatic rising stars, The Book of Cthulhu demonstrates how Mythos fiction has been a major cultural meme throughout the 20th century, and how this type of story is still salient, and terribly powerful today.Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

    From Hades and Persephone to Kali, from Loki to Inanna, this anthology explores retellings of myths across cultures and civilizations. Featuring award-winning and critically acclaimed writers such as Seanan McGuire, Naomi Novik, Rebecca Roanhorse, JY Yang, Alyssa Wong, Indrapramit Das, Carlos Hernandez, Sarah Gailey, Ann Leckie, John Chu, Ursula Vernon, Carmen Maria Machado, Stephen Graham Jones, Arkady Martine, Amal El-Mohtar, Jeffrey Ford, and more, The Mythic Dream is sure to become a new classic.

    By placing ordinary characters in extraordinary situations, Adjei-Brenyah reveals the violence, injustice, and painful absurdities that black men and women contend with every day. These stories tackle urgent instances of racism and cultural unrest and explore the many ways we fight for humanity in an unforgiving world.

    Revisions from the author's notes are included, allowing a deeper view into her world and a better understanding of her work. The Nebula Award–winning short story Love Is the Plan, the Plan Is Death, the Hugo Award–winning novella The Girl Who Was Plugged In, and the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning novella Houston, Houston, Do You Read? are included.The stories of Alice Sheldon, who wrote as James Tiptree Jr. ( Up the Walls of the World ) until her death in 1987, have been heretofore available mostly in out-of-print collections. Thus the 18 accomplished stories here will be welcomed by new readers and old fans. ''The Screwfly Solution'' describes a chilling, elegant answer to the population problem. In ''Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death,'' the title tells the tale--species survival insured by imprinted drives--but the story's force is in its exquisite, lyrical prose and its suggestion that personal uniqueness is possible even within biological imperatives. ''The Girl Who Was Plugged In'' is a future boy-meets-girl story with a twist unexpected by the players. ''The Women Men Don't See '' displays Tiptree's keen insight and ability to depict singularity within the ordinary. In Hugo and Nebula award-winning ''Houston, Houston, Do You Read?'' astronauts flying by the sun slip forward 500 years and encounter a culture that successfully questions gender roles in ours.ContentsIntroduction by Michael SwanwickThe Last Flight of Doctor Ain (1969)The Screwfly Solution (1977)And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side (1972)The Girl Who Was Plugged In (1973)The Man Who Walked Home (1972)And I Have Come Upon This Place by Lost Ways (1972)The Women Men Don’t See (1973)Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! (1976)Houston, Houston, Do You Read? (1976)With Delicate Mad Hands (1981)A Momentary Taste of Being (1975)We Who Stole the Dream (1978)Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1974)Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death (1973)On the Last Afternoon (1972)She Waits for All Men Born (1976)Slow Music (1980)And So On, and So On (1971)

    P. Lovecraft and the paperback era of P. K. Dick, and arguably is as influential as both these authors. From a historical context, Leiber, in fact, knew both of the authors, and his work can be seen as a bridge connecting the many different flavors of genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Edited by award-winning editors Jonathan Strahan and Charles Brown, this new collection of the grand master's fiction covers all facets of his work, and features an Introduction by Neil Gaiman and an Afterword by Michael Chabon.Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

    By the anniversary show a year later, the fanbase had exploded, vaulting the podcast into the #1 spot on iTunes. Since then, its popularity has grown by epic proportions, hitting more than 100 million downloads, and Night Vale has expanded to a successful live multi-cast international touring stage show and a New York Times bestselling novel. Now the first two seasons are available as books, offering an entertaining reading experience and a valuable reference guide to past episodes.Mostly Void, Partially Stars introduces us to Night Vale, a town in the American Southwest where every conspiracy theory is true, and to the strange but friendly people who live there.Mostly Void, Partially Stars features an introduction by creator and co-writer Joseph Fink, a foreword by Cory Doctorow, and behind-the-scenes commentary and guest introductions by performers from the podcast and notable fans, including Cecil Baldwin (Cecil), Dylan Marron (Carlos), and Kevin R. Free (Kevin) among others. Also included is the full script from the first Welcome to Night Vale live show, Condos. Beautiful illustrations by series artist Jessica Hayworth accompany each episode.Mostly Void, Partially Stars is an absolute must-have whether you’re a fan of the podcast or discovering for the first time the wonderful world of Night Vale.

    Its hundreds of remarkable stories span from science fiction to fantasy to horror, and everything in between. Now Tor.com is making some of those worlds available for the first time in print.This volume collects some of the best short stories Tor.com has to offer, with Hugo and Nebula Award-winning short stories and novelettes chosen from all ten years of the program. Including stories by: Charlie Jane Anders, N. K. Jemisin, Leigh Bardugo, Jeff VanderMeer, Yoon Ha Lee, Carrie Vaughn, Ken Liu, Kai Ashante Wilson, Kameron Hurley, Seth Dickinson, Rachel Swirsky, Laurie Penny, Alyssa Wong, Kij Johnson, David D. Levine, Genevieve Valentine, Max Gladstone, and many others.TABLE OF CONTENTS:“Six Months, Three Days” by Charlie Jane Anders“Damage” by David D. Levine“The Best We Can” by Carrie Vaughn“The City Born Great” by N. K. Jemisin“A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel” by Yoon Ha Lee“Waiting on a Bright Moon” by JY Yang“Elephants and Corpses” by Kameron Hurley“About Fairies” by Pat Murphy“The Hanging Game” by Helen Marshall“The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere” by John Chu“A Cup of Salt Tears” by Isabel Yap“The Litany of Earth” by Ruthanna Emrys“Brimstone and Marmalade” by Aaron Corwin“Reborn” by Ken Liu“Please Undo This Hurt” by Seth Dickinson“The Language of Knives” by Haralambi Markov“The Shape of My Name” by Nino Cipri“Eros, Philia, Agape” by Rachel Swirsky“The Lady Astronaut of Mars” by Mary Robinette Kowal“Last Son of Tomorrow” by Greg van Eekhout“Ponies” by Kij Johnson“La beauté sans vertu” by Genevieve Valentine“A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers” by Alyssa Wong“A Kiss With Teeth” by Max Gladstone“The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections” by Tina Connolly“The End of the End of Everything” by Dale Bailey“Breaking Water” by Indrapramit Das“Your Orisons May Be Recorded” by Laurie Penny“The Tallest Doll in New York City” by Maria Dahvana Headley“The Cage” by A.M. Dellamonica“In the Sight of Akresa” by Ray Wood“Terminal” by Lavie Tidhar“The Witch of Duva: A Ravkan Folk Tale” by Leigh Bardugo“Daughter of Necessity” by Marie Brennan“Among the Thorns” by Veronica Schanoes“These Deathless Bones” by Cassandra Khaw“Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch” by Kelly Barnhill“This World Is Full of Monsters” by Jeff VanderMeer“The Devil in America” by Kai Ashante Wilson“A Short History of the Twentieth Century, or, When You Wish Upon A Star” by Kathleen Ann Goonan

    Many of these characters live in a utopian future of instant connection and technological gratification that belies an unbridgeable human distance, while others inhabit a post-collapse landscape made primitive by disaster, which they must work to rebuild as we once did millennia ago.In “The Cartographers,” the main character works for a company that creates and sells virtual memories, while struggling to maintain a real-world relationship sabotaged by an addiction to his own creations. In “Saying Goodbye to Yang,” the robotic brother of an adopted Chinese child malfunctions, and only in his absence does the family realize how real a son he has become.Children of the New World grapples with our unease in this modern world and how our ever-growing dependence on new technologies has changed the shape of our society. Alexander Weinstein is a visionary new voice in speculative fiction for all of us who are fascinated by and terrified of what we might find on the horizon.